Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Writer Reflects On The IP's Strengths And Appeal

As big a Pokémon fan as I am, I haven't touched most of the spinoffs, Mystery Dungeon included. My brother loves these games, though, and I got him a cart of Red Rescue Team for his birthday. He was super happy 😁

I didn’t think I was going to be into the Mystery Dungeon games, but they really grew on me. Super is probably in my top 20 games, and the ending to Gates of Infinity had be in tears. Brilliant series that manages to be independent of the IP it’s based on.

This is one of those games series that I still have on my Backlog somewhere...

Played every pokemon md and I consider explorers of time/darkness to be among the best jrpgs I ever played. Its been a decade but I still remember parts of the story like the betrayal of dusknoir, the manipulation of primal Dialga, the world dying and time stops and the struggle of the mc to understand who they are.

Played demo on Switch and found it utterly tedious.

Would much rather a Pokemon Conquest sequel.

The game is too grindy and art style is ok I guess. Not very detailed.

I loved the first one growing up, considered it on par with the mainline games. I only played a bit of the second one though (went through a call of duty faze at the time and left Pokémon alone for some years), would like to have a switch port to give it a go considering it's meant to be the best one (or better yet a new one altogether)

The Mystery Dungeon games are fantastic, the writing is great and more profound than the main line games. Blue Rescue team is still a game I remember fondly, and due to the nature of the story it allows you to bond closely with the characters and the setting. One of the few video games that has made me cry real tears. Plus the music is great!

That being said the Mystery Dungeon DX remakes really put me off on the artstyle. I don't care for how the models are shaded to look painted, I feel like they could have pushed that effect more and it might have looked better. Not sure, just the 3D assets interacting on the 2Dish background. I do want to pick it up eventually, maybe it will win me over once I actually play it.

I hope they do another Mystery Dungeon game eventually, the series has so much going for it. I just think they could tweak the art style a bit more.

The original Blue Mystery Dungeon is my favorite Pokemon game of all time. Just the concept that you are a Pokemon and get to play/command one was amazing to me back in the mid-2000s. I loved the dungeon exploration aspect, being able to recruit every Pokemon at the time, the friend bases and building up the town. The music was fantastic and the story was surprising deep, even made me cry at some points. It's one of those games that has not really aged well (the remake on Switch was awful and botched a lot of things but in all honesty, the gameplay was nothing to write home about) but the early Mystery dungeon entries have a nostalgic magic that cannot be matched by modern Pokemon games. Legends Arceus came very close though!

There's no such thing as a bad PMD game - at worst one is underwhelming. Whether the next one is a new entry, a remake of Explorers, or, IDK, the 3 WiiWare ones we never got in the West, I'll be buying them Day One.

I tried a game or two of this spinoff series...they never lasted long.

My two Mystery Dungeon games were SUCH a big part of my life. I've always been an overemotional basket case, but the tears that were shed through Red Rescue Team and Explorers of Darkness. Yes, the gameplay is all the same, with no real bells or whistles, but it didn't need anything fancy to be a good time. Both games have amazing soundtracks that I still listen to and can call up in my memories on demand, and the stories that were so incredible to my younger self still stand with the best sixteen years after the fact (in the case of Red Rescue Team, I'll admit I don't remember what point in my timeline Explorers happened.) The storm of emotion tied to those games, though! I swear I spent half of the story sequences crying my eyes out. I've gotten emotional over some of my Pokémon from the main series games, but there just aren't a lot of moments in the storylines themselves that invoke much in the way of feelings, other than frustration because I'm JUST trying to get to the next town I swear if I run into ANOTHER bleeping Bidoof I'm gonna scream- but I digress. The emotion in these games, the A+ soundtracks that help that incredible storytelling along, the unique gameplay that still has me picking up RRT to this day, and the sheer gorgeousness and detail of the worlds make these some of my all-time best games. And I mean, really, they outdid themselves - every single Pokémon in the game(s) has its own individual animations, unlike the main games of the timeframe, which had a largely static sprite sent out into battle, which then used the same animation of the moves as every other Pokémon witch access to them. No one is boring in the Mystery Dungeon series, each Pokémon is its own unique entity, just as they would be in a living, breathing world. (As an aside, Pokémon Ranger had a lot of that individuality too, and was another excellent game with a lot of love and care put into crafting its world.)

In fairness, the games aren't perfect - RRT had a very limited inventory that made the difficult dungeons even moreso, and clients who joined you for missions were the absolute bane of my existence, level one wimps you couldn't direct and who always, ALWAYS jumped into the fight and used up your precious, limited stock of Reviver Seeds because they were programmed to be idiotic liabilities. Explorers pretty well fixed the inventory issue, but the whole concept of the Guild rubbed me the wrong way, the same as the Ranger Academy did in Shadows of Almia, because in the first game of each series, it was your passion and determination to make the world a better place for your fellow beings that got you where you were, whereas the sequels presented a system of 'No we don't allow that in this world, pay your dues to the established organization, how dare you want to help people without the proper paperwork and registration' that didn't (and doesn't) sit right with me. That theme aside, though, Explorers was a grand old time, and Grovyle will always be in my heart 💚

I recently bought Rescue Team DX for the Switch and was massively disappointed in it. The cel-shaded art style just made the world feel fake and empty, the added and altered dialogue that I suppose I should have expected from a remake was a disappointment nonetheless for someone with so much love for the original as it was, and the overly complicated control system that doesn't even include a non-move attack was... no. Nope. I was so excited to get to replay the game I love on a new system and experience the story again, but I just can't make myself do it. It's not a total loss, because I do have a 3 year-old sister who loves Pokémon (you're welcome for that, Mom ;P) and with no prior experience to sully it for her, I'm sure she'll love it once she learns to read and can play it without an adult to tell her what everything says. For myself though, I've got my fingers crossed for GBA games coming to Switch Online, and RRT to be one of them so I can sink myself back into the universe that carried me through so many years of my young life without having to wipe the save from my old game (which I did once out of an overpowering desire to be an Eevee, immediately regretted, and will never, ever do again now that my hundreds of hours save file is back to its proper state of Charmander-ness.)

So I have only played gates to infinity and DX and well gates was really good I loved it the story felt really emotional and it made me feel the same emotions as the characters I chose. But imo DX didn't really feel the same idk if it was the art or the story I just didn't feel the same. If they do release another mystery dungeon game I personally would like them to change the art style from what it is now. I hope the gba online thing does have the old mystery dungeon games as I'd love to experience them.